Release date: January 31, 2015
Subgenre: Contemporary fantasy, science fiction
About The Gael Gates:
Portals between worlds, built by ancient Gaels, invoked by magic, now
gone berserk! Three people disappear into the Gael Gates, and a forensic
physicist and apostate Druid is called in to investigate. He discovers
that the portal system is coming apart. Can his Science save Magic, or
will his Magic save Science?
Excerpt:
Professor Ríoghan Tanguy frowned at the
stand of obeliscos dominating the skyline at Las Cogotas, on Galicia in the
Southern Triangle. Under a cloudy sky, smoke billowed from between the
obeliscos, the natives preparing for another transit. Or another travesty, she
thought.
Although Celtiberian in extraction,
she scorned the beliefs of these superstitious provincials. Give me an
angstroscope and microcalipers any day! she thought. She and the local Druid,
Arturo Lubri, had clashed publicly over their differences, Professor Tanguy
excavating an ancient tor over the ridge, the local Druid claiming it was a
sacred site abandoned by the proto-Celtiberians and therefore inviolate. Sylphs
of the patron Elemental Air made their home at these sites, according to the
Druid. Professor Tanguy had never seen one and scoffed at the Druid's
assertions.
Clad in her digs,
dun-gray and drab, garb meant for the dirty work of excavation, Ríoghan
grimaced and made her way uphill toward the obeliscos. A straggler or two also
made their way toward the hilltop, the plumes of smoke like a beacon, most the
villagers having already assembled.
Druid Lubri is
probably exhorting them all to dance and writhe! Ríoghan thought, greeting
those who strode uphill beside her. Their lively dress, frilled cotton cloth
embroidered with multicolor thread, made her look positively dumpy. She'd get
no work today from the local laborers she'd hired, all of them attending the
ceremony, Lubri herding his flock like an assiduous sheep dog.
The straight
streets on Galicia were somewhat at odds to the winding, narrow labyrinths
common to other planets in the Southern Triangle, the constellation occupied
mostly by settlers of Celtiberian extraction.
The mechanism of
transport through the Gael Gates was thought to derive from the principles of
Alcubierre warp drive, and yet the Druids continued to mythologize their gate
use with elaborate ritual and prestidigitation. Such sordid sortilege did
little to advance a scientific understanding of the Gael Gates, hypotheses
which still eluded astral and particle physicists, who posited that they
operated on A-warp, in which time and distance were fundamentally the same
properties, differing only in their articulation.
An archeologist,
Ríoghan cared less about the theory and more about the ignorance being
perpetuated by the Druids. She'd arrived at Las Cogotas through the gates two
years ago to study the ancient sites on the planet. Gamma Doradus, the
double-star system of her home planet, Nemetobriga, contained very minor
proto-Celtiberian sites, all of them catalogued and excavated long before.
Each obelisco in
the Henge on Galicia was etched in Celtiberian runes all the way to the top,
the script still indecipherable to modern linguists, their study forbidden by
both local superstition and the imperious Druid, Arturo Lubri.
Ríoghan reached the
edge of the obeliscos, an area bordered by a low rock wall, the rocks fitted by
hand without mortar, encircling the hilltop and the obeliscos within, nine
pillars of stone poking into the sky, two smaller sets of three pillars
standing twenty-seven feet on either side of a third, larger set soaring
eighty-one feet. Each set known individually as a tribelisco represented one of
the three Gates sacred to Neo-Pagan Druidry—the Well, the Fire, and the Tree.
Balderdash! Ríoghan
thought.
Druid Lubri stood in
a wide stance before the largest tribelisco, waving his heavily-embroidered and
-sequined cape with an elaborate flourish as he intoned in ancient Galician the
incantation needed to open the gate. Villagers encircled the tribelisco, hands
held as though in vigil, repeating the Druid's utterances. New arrivals were
incorporated into the ring, the archeologist along with them.
Arturo spun,
flaunting his cape as though taunting a bull, his eyes glazed in ecstasy, a
fine froth of spittle collecting at the corners of his mouth.
He looks possessed!
she thought, as if he had rabies. Hydrophobia occasionally cropping up in
isolated places such as this, she wondered what he'd do if she threatened to
throw a pail of water on him. A giggle escaped her, and the woman beside her,
Doña Noba Pacem, shrank in disgust.
Druid Arturo Lubri
froze, his gaze fixed to Ríoghan. "We have an infidel in our midst! She
who mocks the sylphs and desecrates our sacred sites!" His arm leapt at
her, finger stabbing toward her. "Seize her!"
Multiple villagers
converged on her before she could react.
"Bring her
here," the Druid commanded. "A rope!"
They easily
overcame her struggles and dragged her into place between two of the eighty-one
foot obeliscos. They tied each limb with rope, her legs three feet apart, her
arms suspended at forty-five degrees overhead.
Lubri stuck his
face into hers. His breath stank of queimada. "You'll desecrate no more,
Infidel! You'll meet the sylphs face to face and then you'll believe!"
"What are you
doing, Cabrón?!" she spat, seeing he was drunk.
He backhanded her,
and her head flew to the side. "Perra pequeña! Cona! Back in position,
everyone! Let's send this succubus to moura encantada!" As he backed away
and resumed his chants and gyrations, the villagers joined hands again.
Her lip and cheek
stung, and she tasted blood. She strained against the ropes, but none of them
gave, her stretched-out arms giving her no leverage. "Dom Ontonio, help
me!" she called to her lead laborer, who'd helped her recruit her dig
crew.
Belenos Ontonio
kept his place in the circle, sweat on his brow and fear in his eyes.
Lubri whipped his
cape back and forth, grasped it with both hands and thrust it to the ground,
kneeling at Ríoghan's feet and ululating stridently. Then he abruptly
straightened and flung the cape back over his head.
Professor Ríoghan
Tanguy heard a thunderclap, and she was sucked into the gate, rope and all.
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About Scott Michael Decker:
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Scott Michael Decker, MSW, is an author by avocation and a
social worker by trade. He is the author of twenty-plus novels in the Science
Fiction and Fantasy genres, dabbling among the sub-genres of space opera,
biopunk, spy-fi, and sword and sorcery. His biggest fantasy is wishing he were
published. Asked about the MSW
after his name, the author is adamant it stands for Masters in Social Work, and
not "Municipal Solid Waste," which he spreads pretty thick as well. His
favorite quote goes, "Scott is a social work novelist, who never had time
for a life" (apologies to Billy Joel). He lives and dreams happily with
his wife near Sacramento, California.
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